This project is still fairly early in development but I decided to post about it now to get some sense of the community's interest in a game like this.

The game is a retro dungeon crawler, inspired by games such as Solstice, the Immortal, Equinox, Dungeon Master and Zelda. The game will feature combat, platforming, puzzle solving, exploration and character growth through item acquisition and learning new spells. You play as a Wizard, most of your offensive abilities come in the form of spells and ranged combat using your staff. Spells can be used for both offensive purposes and to help solve the environmental puzzles.

Puzzles range from the simple to difficult, simple examples include: pressure plates to open a door, move a block to make a jump, freeze an enemy with ice magic to get across some spikes. With combat, choosing the right spell for the enemy or situation and using the environment will be required to be effective (an example would be using wind spell to knock an enemy into some spikes).

Additional Information:
* Universal with support for all the various resolutions.
* No IAP - pay once and get the whole game.
* Should run fine on the iPhone 3GS, perhaps even on older hardware.
* Pure 2D rendering using a limited color palette (NES) and approximately NES resolution - adjusted for device aspect ratio and integer scaling (no pixel distortion).
* While the rooms here fit in view, the view scrolls as the player moves so rooms can be much bigger as well.
* 20 hours of gameplay planned (more if players explore fully).
* Multiple difficulty levels.
* No experience levels or grinding, everything is upgraded from items that you find or buy, including health and magic, similar to most of the Zelda games.
* Optional content, many spells in the game are not required to complete the quest, for example, but will make some encounters and puzzles easier. Remember to explore.
* Hint system - stuck and don't know what to do? You can ask the game to give you a hint, similar to some of the newer Adventure games. Obviously this should only be used if needed, so there will be an achievement for getting through the game without asking for hints (or only asking X times).

So how far along is the game?
* Custom built editor working and used to build the rooms you see below.
* Player movement, jumping, physics and collision. The player graphic is not complete (using a placeholder), which is why its not shown in the screenshots.
* Story and game-flow fleshed out.
* 50% design complete.
* Core engine mostly complete.
* First floor of the dungeon about 20% complete (though still missing final touches such as more decoration sprites, enemies and loot).

Next steps:
* Finish the first level of the dungeon.
* Finish the player graphics and animation.
* Finish setting up treasure, items and triggers.
* Enemies & combat.
* Release a gameplay video.

I will update this post in the future with the full story and a gameplay video. But for now I'll leave a few screenshots.
(Blurring in the screenshots caused by shrinking from 1024x768 - iPad 1 resolution - to fit in the forum).

Here I'll show some screenshots from the latest work - screenshots are best viewed at full resolution.

Flame of the Deep sounds amazing and the retro isometric graphics looks promising. It sounds like with a built editor and core engline functional with 50% of the design complete you guys have come a long way. It's hard to tell how the game will perform from the details above but what is there sounds very exciting. I'd definitely enjoy a game like this. Please do keep us update. Thank you also for making the game universal for us iPod/iPhone users.

Thanks for the awesome responses. I just recently finished integrating the game UI. The on-screen UI will be minimal, though you will have access to an automap, inventory and so forth of course. Once the proper player character sprite is in and a little bit more art I'll show some more screenshots. A gameplay video shouldn't be too far beyond that.

Once the gameplay video is up I'll probably post this in the iPhone/iPod upcoming games area too - probably where I should have put it to begin with since it is Universal.

It sounds like a lot of attention is being given to level design, which is great. It might be interesting if the developers included a roguelike endless challenge mode to increase replayability.

I'm considering a "New Game +" option with increased challenge and "remixed" layouts, similar to the Second Quest in Zelda. What you suggest might also be doable, but the primary focus is on getting the core game done right now, so this decision will be made later.

Quote:

Originally Posted by undeadcow

Will there be multiple player classes? If so I'd be curious to hear more information. The original information references character animation in a way that implies there may be only one figure.

There will be one character, which the game will be tailored for. In this regard, think of Zelda or the Immortal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by undeadcow

How will combat be? Is this a turn based style game or continuous action/movement (like Zelda)? ...or will combat even be a primary focus with the emphasis on puzzles?

Combat and action will be realtime and continuous. There will be a mix of combat, puzzle solving and exploration - but more in the line of Zelda, Metroid, Equinox rather then Diablo. Also in some cases enemies themselves may be used to help solve a puzzle or get through a room.

...Combat and action will be realtime and continuous. There will be a mix of combat, puzzle solving and exploration - but more in the line of Zelda, Metroid, Equinox rather then Diablo. Also in some cases enemies themselves may be used to help solve a puzzle or get through a room.

This sounds interesting; I can't think of many iOS games with this sort of focus. I'll be on the look-out for more information as it comes avaliable.

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